FIGHT PFIZER'S KILLER
GREED
DEMAND ACCESS TO LIFE SAVING AIDS DRUGS FOR POOR COUNTRIES
THURSDAY, SEPT 7, 2000 AT 12 NOON AT PFIZER PHARMACEUTICALS
AT 42NDS ST., BETWEEN 2ND AND 3RD AVENUES, NEW YORK CITY

Pfizer, the largest drug
company in the United States, makes a life saving AIDS drug called
fluconazole (Diflucan). It treats a painful brain infection called
Cryptococcal meningitis. Without treatment, the infection kills
people with AIDS in two months. About 10% of the 34 million people
with HIV worldwide will develop this brain infection.

Pfizer's fluconazole brings
in more than one billion dollars in sales each year. Around the
world poor people with AIDS suffer and die without this drug,
because Pfizer's price gouging keeps it out of reach of the countless
people who need it.

In South Africa, where
4.5 million people have HIV, no one can afford Pfizer's killer
prices. AIDS activists in South Africa and the United States have
been demanding that Pfizer drop the price or allow generic production
of the drug. In South Africa, Pfizer's patent means that even
the government must pay $4.15 per pill, while in Thailand, where
Pfizer does not have a patent on fluconazole, the drug is only
$0.29 per pill. In Kenya, where Pfizer also has exclusive rights,
fluconazole costs $18.00 per pill -- more expensive, even, than
U.S. prices.

While Pfizer blocks access
to affordable, generic fluconazole, countless numbers of people
with AIDS die preventable deaths. In an unprecedented resolution,
the United Nations Subcommission for the Protection and Promotion
of Human Rights recently found that the WTO's rules on pharmaceutical
patents are anathema to human rights, and will effectively cripple
efforts by developing countries to deal with epidemics of disease.
The resolution states that there are " apparent conflicts
between the intellectual property rights regime embodied in the
[WTO rules], on the one hand, and international human rights law,
on the other." In a contradictory move, Pfizer is one of
50 companies that UN Secretary -General Kofi Annan has invited
to join in a "global compact." This agreement allows
the corporations to use the UN emblem in return for pledging to
uphold human rights principles on labor and environmental protection.
But a letter signed by 20 nongovernmental organization s has charged
that the compact, which lacks any enforcement mechanism, allows
corporations -- many of them flagrant polluters and sweatshop
operators - to "wrap themselves in the flag of the UN in
order to 'blue-wash' their public image while at the same time
avoiding significant changes to their behavior." Pfizer should
not get a free ride from the UN while its pricing policies are
killing hundreds of thousands world-wide.